The History of American Food

Listen to "021 Beer - It's Pilgrim Breakfast, We Are Not Drunk Yet" on Spreaker. Link to the Episode: Episode 21 Beer – It’s Pilgrim Breakfast, We Are Not Drunk Yet Pictures and descriptions of Persimmon Beer: Atlas Obscura - Persimmon Beer Foraged Persimmons Image by: Michael Twitty for  Atlas Obscura Mildly Anachronistic Pumpkin Beer - it has hops, molasses, spice and grain.  Can't fault them for brewing beer that people WANT to drink.  Nothing like a leather tankard for enjoying your  non-barley beer Related Media: Sambrook, Pamela. Country House Brewing   in England 1500 - 1900 . London: Hambledon Press, 1996 McWilliams, James E. A Revolution in Eating. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005 Meacham, Sarah Hand. Every Home a Distillery. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009

Listen to "020 Wheat & Barley - Missing Real Bread & Beer" on Spreaker.  Link to the Episode: Episode 20 Wheat & Barley – Missing Real Bread & Beer It's all grass! Compare to Teosinte (corn before it was corn): to Barley: (2 row preferred for beer, 6 row usually eaten as a grain - functionally interchangeable, but some flavor/sugar/fermentation differences) By Xianmin Chang - Own work by Xianmin.Chang@orkney.uhi.ac.uk;  changxianmin2002@yahoo.co.uk, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5512681 & Wheat: Photo Credit: Mark Nesbitt - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49399350 The difference comes in the germination temps, length of growing season, nutrient requirements, and then the all important gluten - does the ground flour - when wet stick together and stretch - so it can form bubbles during baking, or crumble and need to be a flatbread. Quern Stones: On a table to catch the ground meal...

Listen to "019 Butter & Cheese - Finally, Some Dairy We Can Sell" on Spreaker.   Link to the Episode: Episode 19 Butter & Cheese – Finally, Some Dairy We Can Sell Milk Chemistry Week!  Have fun with the science of curds.  And the fat liquid flip flop of cream to butter. Learn about just what lactose (and lactose intolerance is) and why Parmesan and Ghee are OK for the no lactose crew. Have you been looking for a reason to try more cheeses?  Now is your chance!  It's time to try farmer cheese - a great bet at your local farmers market.  And eat it up quick - with its high liquid content it doesn't last long. You're young'uns will be neglecting chores Milk going sour Unstrained in the Springhouse! Butter stamps for marking butter to be sold. This is some of the first branding - so people would look for the same stamp - if the butter was good (author's photo taken at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, PA) Related Media: Mendelson, Anne.  Milk: The ...

Listen to "018 Milk - New, Clabber, Sour & Cream" on Spreaker. Link to the Episode:  Episode 18 Milk - New, Clabber, Sour & Cream Hot Milk.   The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. "The cat drinks foamy, fresh milk. Farm, Canyon County, Idaho"  The New York Public Library Digital Collections . 1941.  Thick Milk Sour Milk  & Cream When we got a cold glass of milk from the fridge - all these elements and incarnation of the beverage likely never occurred to us.  But our intrepid 17th Century adventurers were very aware of each and every one of these.  Including "crying over spilled milk" because they were working hard for every last drop!  AND spilled milk in the dairy corner meant a bunch of scrubbing.  Sigh. Related Media: Mendelson, Anne. Milk: The surprising story of Milk through the Ages. NY; Borzoi Books, 2008. Oliver, Sandra. Food in Col...

Listen to "017 Beef - It's Almost Never for Dinner" on Spreaker. 017 Beef - It’s Almost Never for Dinner Shipboard Salt Beef Cask This would be in the galley - filled from the barrels in the hold as needed Making the connection that advances in ship building, navigation and cannon meant people wanted to spend (or wanted their soldiers to spend) months or even years at sea - meant the whole food preservation game changed.  When your armies (or well, in this case, Navies) have to be entirely supplied, and lack the ability to forage, a new food pipeline to supply a whole new military division has to develop – ta da! Naval Stores.  Something that hadn’t really existed since the heyday of Mediterranean Navies of antiquity.  The fact that naval warfare rearranged British landowners priorities which displaced peasants, which created a class hopeless enough to emigrate to the New World is a strange set of cause and effect I had never considered. Salt Beef su...